Use SharePoint as an out-of-box application whenever possible. We
designed the new SharePoint UI to be clean, simple and fast and work
great out-of-box. We encourage you not to modify it, which could add
complexity, performance and upgradeability and to focus your energy on
working with users and groups to understand how to use SharePoint to
improve productivity and collaboration, and identifying and promoting
best practices in your organization.

I believe that if you look more deeply past the UI, you'll discover
that your colleagues really want polished applications that solve
specific problems. The dearth of specific, elaborated applications in
SharePoint has been its biggest Achilles heel (realstorygroup.com/Blog/2263-Three-options-for-social-enabling-SharePoint).Sure, SharePoint offers blogs, wikis, forums and status messages. But
those are just services that need to be integrated and extended within
some context to add real value.

I haven't (yet) seen that approach
change in SharePoint 2013. The new version features a lot of snazzy new
services, but you'll need someone else to turn them into applications.

Could it be that Redmond is not in agreement on what their product does? They are not alone in this regard, but given how so many claim Sharepoint can do so much, the reality may not be as everyone believes.